Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the thing, while we’re waiting on AMD, Apple is already half way through an M2/3
The 4800U came out in March 2020 with 8 cores, 16 threads.
[deleted]
Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
381–390 of 942 posts
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#382One thing which I don't think has been commented on is the marketing effort behind the M1. It's getting a lot of prominence and its use across lots of computers means that there can be a consistent message that "M1 is great - get a new Mac and get an M1". It also provides an opportunity to distinguish between M1 and the next generation M2 (presumably). I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 sta…
Yeah the marketing effort is immense, and it's really surprising to me how many eagerly lap up the angle Apple is pushing without much reflection, even on HN. Like the good old Apple hype days. Now to be fair, the M1 is an impressive iteration on the A* chip line. But the Ryzen 5000 mobile chips really don't look bad at all in comparison, and a 5nm version of those would level the field.
Let's look beyond the hype:
- With M1, Apple has finally closed the loop and created a fully closed system that it has control over vs an x86-64 platform that is more open and gives us users more choice and control.
- All new devices with M1 SoC score very poorly on repairability and upgradebility vs the x86-64 platform that still allows you to repair / upgrade RAM, memory, CPU's and other parts in an affordable manner.
- And because of the above two, all M1 devices with low ram and storage, have planned obsolescence of 3-5 years built-in, along with a kill switch to totally disable the device.
Apple has a found a great fit for their business model with the ARM SoCs. Even when (not if, when) AMD and Intel bring out better processors, Apple will stick with their ARM SoCs because todays computing power has far outpaced the demand made by the common softwares used by all. And Apple can cater to the common denominators with their own OS + CPU + 8GB + 256 GB NvME quite well for maybe another decade.
I am happy there is some good tech development and competition in computer systems. But my Intel Mac Mini will be the last mac I will buy from Apple. macOS Mojave still runs fine on it. Otherwise there's always Windows, Linux and FreeBSD. That's the real advantage of the x86-64 platform that people like me will never sacrifice for closed systems like the M1 devices.
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, if you're running big IDEs (e.g. Rider/IntelliJ, Visual Studio), containers and VMs, 32GB is really a must. There always seem to be people in these threads claiming that 16GB or even 8GB is enough - I just don't understand how that could possibly be for most of the HN demographic.
Do you think most of the HN demographic is actually running big IDEs, containers and VMs at the same time? I'm personally a CS student and never had to run more than a few lightweight docker containers + maybe one running some kind of database + VS Code and that has been working fine on a laptop with 8GB and pop_os. Could imagine that a lot of other people on HN are also just generally interested in tech but not nece…
I run like 50 chrome tabs, a half dozen Intellij panes, youtube, slack, and a bunch of heavy containers at the same time, and that's just my dev machine.
My desktop is an ML container train/test machine. I also have ssh into two similar machines, and a 5 machine, 20GPU k8s cluster. I pretty much continuously have dozens of things building /running at once.
Maybe I'm an outlier though?
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they've been heralding the death of Moore's law since he started and that the "one trick ponies" just keep coming. He says he doesn't doubt that they will continue. The situation is clearly far worse than what you suggest. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, apparent computer performance was doubling roughly every two years. Your shiny new desktop was obsolete in 24 months. Today, we're lucky to get a 15% gain in tw…
This is false, computer performance has been doubling nearly every year. See for example https://www.top500.org/statistics/perfdevel/
How is this calculated? It isn't very clear. Is this representative of individual devices or is it caused by more of the same devices?
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#385Meh. The M1 got laughed right out of our office. It couldn't do anything without us changing all of our code and tooling for it.
We'll see how stable the landscape looks for it in five years.
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking. I think people are a little too nostalgic when talking about Apple build quality. There's a 2011 MBP here that still works well. But recent releases... no better than the competition really.
You have to test new keyboard on M1 MBA/MBP
Test it for what exactly? All ultrabook keyboards are garbage, but they shouldn't out-right fail. "Testing" one isn't going to tell me if it will fail, it's just going to feel as crappy as the other keyboards.
If a product fails within the first 10% of expected lifespan I'm no longer interested in that product. If it fails _AND_ the manufacturer refuses to take responsibility until months of bad press and class action lawsuits then I'd have to be insane to trust them with another device.
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think they have the fab capacity to be able to do that Do you have a source for there being any fab capacity shortage for Apple (or anyone, for that matter) at 5nm? Older nodes are a different story because that's still where most of TSMC's customers are doing their high-volume production.
Plenty of people would like to die-shrink their 7nm designs down to 5nm if only capacity existed.
I think plenty of people will skip it. Even ignoring the high cost, not everything scales as well with every new node. There're plenty of customers who will have no interest in this node right now and some that will have no interest in it ever. I've not seen anything that suggests capacity shortages at 5nm yet, especially for Apple who've already booked all of 3nm for next-gen.
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#388Make it as fabulous as much as you want, $1700 for an 8 core, 8 gigs of ram machine is just one plain fabulous joke. This in the time when 16 gigs ram is the baseline if you plan to do anything more than facebook and instagram.
Don't forget the entry-level 256GB SSD. With 1TB drives around 90€ at retail.
[deleted]
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the time there’s a 5nm version of Ryzen, there’ll be a 4nm M2. AMD’s 5nm shift is scheduled for 2022 iPhone 13 (2021) rumors indicate a 4nm SoC
Node sizes are pretty meaningless at this point.
If it is the same foundry (and it is in this case) you can compare them and you can assume that 3mn is better than 4mn and better than 5mn. Across foundries, no so much.
Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah the marketing effort is immense, and it's really surprising to me how many eagerly lap up the angle Apple is pushing without much reflection, even on HN. Like the good old Apple hype days. Now to be fair, the M1 is an impressive iteration on the A* chip line. But the Ryzen 5000 mobile chips really don't look bad at all in comparison, and a 5nm version of those would level the field.
> But the Ryzen 5000 mobile chips really don't look bad at all in comparison, and a 5nm version of those would level the field. Not look too bad best to say. Even if we add a one node advantage, we still have a ~15 watt chip making 20W-30W chips sweat. If you downclock Zen 3 to match 15W TDP, you may well get M1 beating it by double digit margin. M1 is simply a way more efficient chip than any X86 chip can be because…
> Not look too bad best to say.
What does this mean?